September 9 – Trump and the Tea Party Fizzle; Putin Ups the Ante in Syria; Queen Elizabeth’s Reign Surpasses Her Great-Great-Grandmother’s

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the Tea Party demonstration today on the west lawn of the capitol that was billed as the million patriot protest against Obama’s Iran deal featuring Duck Dynasty headliners plus Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin and Donald Trump, but instead fizzled into a few hundred Obama-haters holding up protest signs. Joseph Cirincione, the president of the Ploughshares Fund who previously directed nuclear non-proliferation and international policy programs at the Center for American Progress and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace joins us to discuss the Tea Party non-event as well as Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy speech at the Brooking Institution and the latest on whether the senate vote on the resolution disapproving Obama’s Iran deal will happen at all.

Part 2

Then we examine reports of deepening Russian military involvement in Syria that claim Moscow has boots on the ground in support of the beleaguered Assad forces. Joshua Landis, the director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma who write the daily newsletter and blog “Syria Comment” joins us to discuss how Putin is upping the ante to force the vacillating West and their Arab allies to join in the fight against ISIS before Damascus falls and there is an even greater exodus of refugees to Europe.   

Part 3

Then finally as Britain and the Commonwealth nations celebrate the milestone of Queen Elizabeth surpassing the reign of her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria, we go to London to speak with Graham Smith, the Campaign Manager and Executive Officer of Republic, a membership-based pressure group representing Britain’s 10-12 million Republicans who want to see the monarchy replaced by an elected head of state. We discuss the antiquated House of Lords and how the queen is not just the head of state, but the head of the class system in the U.K. that still pervades its culture and dominates its society